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Is anyone involved with NHERI? (National Home Education Research Institute)

A few years back I came across a group called NHERI while doing research for adult education. I find them a fascinating resource on homeschooling, but a bit reactionary. Has anyone else dealt with them? Below is one of the articles they sent me this month. Thoughts?

Hello, Eliza, from NHERI and Dr. Ray.

Sometimes
the connection between news stories and articles by professors becomes
very clear. For instance, how might Emergency Medical Services (EMS)
workers and academics be alike?

In
the following, you will read of an EMS worker who appears to think that
homeschooling puts children at relative risk for some kind of abuse or
harm.

After a concerned mother called 911 fearing her son was choking,
an EMS worker proceeded to conduct an inspection of her house on the
premise that she homeschooled, telling the woman "we're agents of the
state".[1]

So
fervent was the emergency medical man's view of homeschoolers that he
did his search without the mother's permission and without a search
warrant.

After the ordeal, the mother, Krista, wrote:

I. Am. Livid.

The homeschool mom is now seeking legal help.

Now
you will read of a professor Robin West, from a prestigious university,
saying that the homeschooled, without State control over their
education, are at special risk for abuse and harm.

First, children who are homeschooled with no state regulation are
at greater risk for unreported and unnoticed physical abuse, when they
are completely isolated in homes. (p. 9).[2]

Not only does this professor claim that homeschool
children are more at risk than others, she holds that homeschooling in general harms society.

Finally, the economic harms. ..... These families are not living
in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer
parks, 1,000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on
tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from
one generation to the next,
depresses the community's overall economic health and their state's tax
base. (p. 10)

There
is a great problem with these kinds of attitudes and claims. There are
philosophical, constitutional, political, and other problems. But for a
moment, let us consider the empirical problem, especially since the
culture of American policymakers, government workers, and academics
thinks of itself as rational and oriented toward respecting
cold, hard facts. (Furthermore, one must wonder what is so bad about a
small American home or living in a home owned by a relative.)

Both
the professor and EMS worker have serious empirical problems. There is
no research anywhere, of which I have ever heard, suggesting that
homeschooled children are more at risk than are State/public schooled or
private schooled children. There is not even any research suggesting
that the homeschooled are at the same risk as are State and private
institutionally schooled children. It is possible, in fact, that one day
researchers will find that those in public/State schools and/or private
institutional schools are more at risk for abuse or other kinds of harm
than are home-educated children.[3] Perhaps one day such research will be conducted.

Research,
on the other hand, consistently finds positive things associated with
homeschooling. For example, whether the data are collected by
researchers or state departments of education, the academic achievement
scores of the homeschooled are consistently higher than those in public
schools. Second, college students who were home educated appear to fare
academically as well or better, on average, than their public schooled
and private schooled peers. Finally, recent research suggests that young
adults who were home educated are more politically tolerant than those
who were raised up in State schools and private institutional schools.[4]

The
vast majority of research on homeschooling so far contraindicates the
negative claims about and behaviors toward homeschoolers of the
professor and the emergency medical worker noted above. Academics,
government workers, and the general public should keep in mind that the
United States is a free country, that the Supreme Court has ruled that
parents - not the government - are in charge of
the education and upbringing of children, and that research findings to
date indicate many positive things associated with parent-led home-based
education (and nothing that suggests overall negative effects).

[3]
One must keep in mind the
following: Even if research finds a correlation between schooling type
and degree of risk for harm, such a numerical relationship or
correlation does not necessarily establish causation.

HELL NO. NHERI is the "research" arm of HSLDA. They intentionally manipulate their statistics about homeschoolers because they fail to openly reveal that their statistics only include members of HSLDA. They do not represent or reflect the majority of homeschoolers in any way. HSLDA is well known for their "alerts" such as the one you c/p here. As you can see the "alert" included a solicitation for donations. They want to scare people into giving them money.

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